Richard Bean doesn’t believe in humans – just weasels, snakes, rats and vultures

Mr Bean, one of our greatest comic exports, has an alter ego. The second Mr Bean, forename Richard, is the author of One Man, Two Guvnors, which thrilled audiences on both sides of the Atlantic. His latest play, Great Britain, dissects the corruption of power in parliament and beyond. The inevitable comparisons with The Duck House, which mocked the expenses scandal, are a little unfair, since the temperament and the intention of the two shows are vastly different.

The Duck House was a delicious slice of theatrical levity about a Home Counties couple drawn into criminality by the culture of parliament. And being a family comedy, it had reserves of emotional warmth that Mr Bean’s scabrous blast of satire entirely lacks. His play adopts the glib sixth-form view that every journalist, politician and policeman in Britain is a ruthless back-stabbing self-promoter. There are no human beings here, only weasels, snakes, rats and vultures.

The central character, Paige Britain, is a gorgeous, stony-hearted red-top news psycho determined to grab whatever she can of money and power while knifing her enemies to death and battening on their corpses. Her newsroom is a vipers’ nest of gloating, swearing hacks who share her greed and ruthlessness. Several audience members swept imperiously from the Lyttelton within a few minutes of curtain-up. Others pulled the ripcord at the interval.

The play is in a hurry to cover a decade of vice and crime and it very nearly trips up on its over-enthusiasm. Terrorists bomb the Tube. Two schoolgirls are abducted and killed. The chief suspect is murdered while on remand. London cops shoot dead innocent black bystanders. A talentless, fornicating Tory MP persuades a media baron to back his leadership bid. A hapless journalist disguises himself as an Arab sheikh and is recognised instantly.